SOSUA, Dominican Republic- We said a lot of goodbyes as we left Sosua, the place in the north of th Dominican Republic that my family had made our home for the past six weeks. “I really hate saying goodbye,” my wife spoke just before leaving our room behind. But the number of goodbyes you say [...]
Published on March 16, 2010
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SOSUA, Dominican Republic- We said a lot of goodbyes as we left Sosua, the place in the north of th Dominican Republic that my family had made our home for the past six weeks.
“I really hate saying goodbye,” my wife spoke just before leaving our room behind.
But the number of goodbyes you say upon leaving a place is often proportional to how much you enjoyed being there. Goodbyes are good, the more you say the better – they are a testament to time well spent. We enjoyed our stay in Sosua, we had friends there, we had a lot of goodbyes to say upon leaving.
Travel is about people, places have little to do with it.
It was a good stay. Sosua was our first international base of operations with my young family. It went well, we can do this, we can travel as a family. We now have confidence that this little dream can be played out across a global stage – our next stop is Guatemala, and then El Salvador by the beginning of April.
We are now looking at a 23 hour journey to Antigua. We are taking the last bus out of Sosua at 6 PM, though our flight does not depart from Santiago until 3:30 AM. A long wait lays ahead of us.
We are now riding fast in the 160 peso bus to Santiago. We are leaving the Dominican Republic, we said our goodbyes, returned our keys, and are on the Road.
It was a good stop, but I am glad to see myself go.
About the Author: VBJ
I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 91 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. VBJ has written 3705 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.
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3 comments… add one
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March 17, 2010, 10:58 am
LinkShit man. I am so jealous you are in Guatemala. I miss it so much.
Are you planning on heading by Lake Atitlan? I’d be interested in reading your take on the whole catastrophic contamination of the lake, assuming the place is still a giant pile of smelly brown goo.
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March 17, 2010, 10:38 pm
LinkHello Caitlin,
Really? Lago Atitlan is a pit of smug? Going to have to check that out, a couple years ago when I was there it was pretty nice.
Any advice on places to travel here?
Thanks,
Wade
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Link
Yeah, there was an infestation of cyanobacteria in October I believe. It gets better and worse depending on the heat, but you can’t swim, all the fish are dead and on warmer days it is all brown and smells bad. Really sad. Maybe things are better but I’m not too optimistic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH7XOQnYIYg
As for places to visit, I’m not sure how good my advice would be… I spent most of my time in Xela (Quetzaltenango… a great place to live but I’m not sure how interesting it would be for a short visit. Unless one of you has any interest in weaving, you could visit the weaving cooperative I worked at. But it’s a lovely town with lots of great people to meet and tons of stuff going on. And there’s great easy hiking in the surrounding hills.)
My favourite town along the lake is definitely San Juan la Laguna, the town next to San Pedro. I would recommend staying there, it really is lovely and the one hotel is super cheap.
Semuc Champey is interesting and would be fun to go swimming with Petra but it’s really expensive to get there.
I guess if you have 10 days, I might do 5-6 days in San Juan la Laguna (you’d be able to get LOTS of investigating and writing done there on the lake problem.) Then maybe 4-5 days in Xela? There’s certainly lots you could write about there and I could get you connected up with some interesting people.
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